Aberrant: Dead Rising - Inside Straight [FIN]

[BlueNinja]

Monday 28 May 2007 (Memorial Day)

Spring Valley Ranch enclave

Dave's office, 0800

The office was quite crowded now, with Dave, Adam, Brandon, Taunya, White Dave, and M-Rod (or, more often, "Hey new guy!") standing around the desk. "The first wall is done. Which is good, it gives us a halfway defensible position. Downside is that we're starting to run low on ammunition. Thoughts?"

Taunya raised a hand, and Dave grinned before gesturing at her. "Block the road? It's only one lane each way, have Adam pick up a couple of large rocks and stop them from walking up."

Brandon waved a hand in a so-so fashion. "It'll slow them. But they'll still come up over the hills. Only thing we haven't seen them do is climb anything harder than a flight of stairs."

"On the upside, we haven't seen any vanishing zombies for the last few weeks," Adam added. "We can get more cars up here to expand the wall."

M-Rod waved a hand before speaking. "If the zombies have finished with the compound in Boulder City, we had a large stockpile of ammunition, as well as heavier weapons. A bunch of guys were on a training exercise from the air force base, and they stole weapons from the armory when it started going bad."

Everyone looked at Adam, who shrugged. "I've been through Boulder City a few times, but I admit I don't remember it real well. I'm pretty sure I could get a car from around Hoover Dam, though, and drive in."

Dave sighed. "When we're done, see if you can get straight to their compound. If so, then get a raiding part, and include M-Rod here. If not, let me know. It'll have to be something different." He glanced down at the inventory sheets on his desk. "We're good on food for a while. Two meals a day for everyone until mid August." He looked over at the survivor from the other human outpost. "How were you guys on food?"

Rod shrugged. "I'm not sure. I wasn't in charge of any of that. I used to work large-scale construction, so my experience with demolitions put me with the weapons. But I don't think we had enough to last the summer." He looked out the window into the hallway. "We had a lot more people than you did, though, and less growing ability."

"Speaking of which," Taunya spoke up again, "the orchard is not doing well. Sure, there's some wild trees up here growing, but at least a quarter of the ones we planted have died. Some of them got insect infestations, some had a kind of dry mold, but some of them just straight withered and died."

Brandon and Dave both swore loudly and viciously. "That cuts into our projection, and badly."

"It's not all bad. The sentries roving outside the wall have found some wild plants, like berries, and a couple of wild apple trees." Taunya shrugged. "I've checked out a few of them, they'll be bitter, but it'll keep us alive."

"If we can make it through the winter on what we grow, good." Dave looked at Adam. "I've got a proposal, and I don't like it, but it's got to be said." Adam tensed up, despite himself, and nodded for their leader to continue. "We've already emptied two Costcos, and a half dozen grocery stores. By spring, assuming we're still alive, we're going to have to start hitting up other places for preserved food."

"Going house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood?" Adam asked. Remembering the last gasp of the Costco had him starting to sweat. Without his abilities, they would have lost a dozen people, and a dozen full pallets of food.

Dave winced. "Eventually, yes. But actually, I was thinking the casinos." White Dave perked up at that, and everyone else looked interested. "I realize that downtown and the strip, just by the number of tourists, are going to have tons of zombies. However, every major hotel casino in this city has got a buffet and a handful of restaurants. And trust me, most of that stuff is not prepared fresh. My wife was a cook for the Paris."

Adam considered it. "Problem, of course, is that all I know is the public areas. I don't know the behind-the-scenes for every casino in the city. Nor do we have people here familiar with every casino, either."

Dave sighed. "Yeah, I know. All the way south on the Strip is the Mandalay Bay. There's not much around it to the south except a housing tract still under construction, which will limit the number of zombies in the area."

"Plus you can check out their supplies," Brandon interjected, and Dave nodded.

"I don't think we had anyone who worked there, which makes for a good dry-run," Dave said. "Check it out. Probably, the food stuff is in the back behind the kitchen. You can raid the kitchens, too, if there's anything worthwhile. Get an idea now, before the zombie attacks come real heavy."

Adam shrugged. "I can do that, I guess. When are we going to hit the rest?"

"During the winter." At the raised eyebrows, White Dave smiled. "I admit, it's not cold in Vegas compared to, say, North Dakota or Maine. But it's still usually below freezing in the city, and it'll definitely be in the low twenties up here in the mountains. At that temperature, the cold should interfere with the zombie movements. It did last winter, to some extent. They were slower, jerkier, and easier to kill."

Brandon nodded. "Who's the crew for this?"

Dave sighed. "Adam, obviously. You and Taunya, I suppose." He glanced up. "Three more people, your choice Adam. You can ask around, to see if we have anyone who worked there. Be prepared to break down doors, windows, hell rip through the drywall if you have to." His lips twisted with a wry smile. "What are they going to do, kick us out?"

"Right," Adam murmured. "I'll ask around, take Karen and another volunteer or two. Definitely shotguns if we have to go through doors."

White Dave raised a hand. "I'm up for it," he said. "I'll grab my rifle. And I can't wait to see you kill a zombie by smashing a slot machine over its head." Everyone laughed at that, and the group dispersed.

Half an hour later, two women and four men joined Adam near his trailer. "Everyone ready?" he asked. Taunya, Karen, and Patrick all jacked a shell into their shotguns. White Dave had found a cowboy hat, which fit disturbingly well with his hunting rifle. Brandon held up his pistol, and patted a hand-stitched bandolero with an extra three clips. "Alright. I haven't been inside the Mandalay Bay, just to the parking lot, so we're going to drop in the middle."

With a deep breath, two square meters dropped out of the grass at their feet. Weapons ready, they swung down into the bright Vegas sunlight.

Almost instantly, the gunfire started. A dozen zombies fell within as many seconds, and after Brandon took a moment to jump up onto a rusting Corolla, the gunfire repeated. "All clear?" Adam asked loudly, shading his eyes.

"I'm going to need to wash off my boots," Taunya griped, kicking a splatter of zombie brains away. Everyone else gave a thumbs-up, looking around the parking lot.

"Good. One second," Adam said, and jumped up to the roof of a semi-trailer nearby. Squinting, he gazed southward at the construction site. "We might have to come back here later. I can see some concrete mix." He jumped back down again. "Everyone ready to rush the doors? I'll take the lead." Pulling the steel bar off his belt, he steadied his grip.

Leading the way at a jog, he sent zombie bodies flying back, skulls crushed or necks snapped. The others followed behind him, taking out the zombies out of his reach, splattering them across the sun-baked cars and trucks in the lot. Near the doors, Adam slowed, looking at the expanse of broken glass. "Watch your step," he warned, sliding his feet forward on the concrete and kicking glass shards out of the way.

They paused just inside the doors, waiting both for their eyes to adjust and zombies the clump up and maximize Adam's explosive potential. Once he felt there were enough, and the zombies were lurching across the glass field, he let fly, and some swearing went on as the glass blew past them. Inside was dark, cavernous, and silent. "What, no zombies inside?" White Dave said. "I'm almost disappointed."

"I'm not," Patrick said. He was the first inside, a small flashlight taped to each side of the shotgun barrel. He flicked the switches on, scanning the vicinity for movement. Everyone else moved in near him, grinding glass into the industrial carpet. Light reflected off of slot machines and video poker and the polished chrome bordering all the signs. "There's a map over here," he said, jiggling the light beam over it.

Weapons pointed outwards, they crept that direction, until their group surrounded the map. "Eyes out," Adam remarked, as he studied it. "Um. If we go down that way," he pointed to his right, "we should come to two restaurants. The buffet is one floor up." He glanced around again. "I think we should glance in the restaurants, then head upstairs and look in the buffet. Seems more likely to have the food supplies we're looking for."

"Gotcha," Karen said, and stepped in that direction. Adam moved up next to her, flashlight and steel bar held ready. They passed the blackjack tables, and there the first zombies came staggering out to them, crashing against the stools. Adam bashed their heads in skillfully while everyone else kept watch. When it was done, he lowered the blood-dripping bar, and stomped back to the group. "You okay, love?"

Adam raised an eyebrow at her, then nodded. "It's a good workout, I suppose. And now I need to clean my boots, too." Taunya laughed at him, and their lights lit up the tables, bordered by a waist-high decorative fence. "Anyone see the opening?"

Lights flicked up and down the length of the iron bars, until finally Adam stepped up to it. With a horrendous squeal, he yanked a section of fence out of the floor, then snapped it off. "Alright, a do-it-yourself door," Brandon quipped before stepping through. His flashlight illuminated the first zombie to emerge from the kitchen, blowing its head off with a quick twitch of the finger.

"Let's get inside the fence, in case more of them come out from the rest of the casino," Karen said, quickly following Brandon. Adam tossed tables and chairs aside to clear their path, and they stepped inside the kitchen area. Another small group of zombies were stepping up from a door to the rear, but they were blown away by the shotguns a second later.

[BlueNinja]

The kitchen for the casino café was small, cramped, and filled with dead flies. Laying out on one stove-top was the remains of a pair of meals, pans filled with dead insects. A desiccated zombie lay on the floor, a pair of large steak knives shoved through its eye sockets. Patrick stood outside in the main casino, his flashlight swinging back and forth, while Adam exited into the back hallway and shone his own light around. A muffled scrunch came from the hall before his head appeared in the doorway. “Check the cabinets and such, then we’ll hit the next one and go upstairs.”

“You want us to clean everything out now?” Karen asked, slinging her shotgun back over a shoulder as she knelt down to pull open a cupboard.

He considered it for a moment before shaking his head. “No, just a quick glance of inventory. This is more of a scouting run.” His head vanished back into the hallway, and another pair of squishy crunching noises came. “And let’s hurry it up, please.”

Thumps and creaks filled the kitchen for a moment as everyone picked a cupboard, drawer, or pantry, and checked it out. A few small items still vanished into pockets, but those were the perks that came with the risky exploration. Then everyone backed out to the main casino floor, Adam tipping over an industrial-sized fridge to block the doorway. Moving through the torn-up decorative fence, they moved deeper into the casino, the light from the outside dwindling to faint shadows and outlines.

The second restaurant was much like the first, though slightly larger, and once back out, their flashlights lit up the ceiling until they found the signs pointing for the buffet. As they neared the escalator, a loud banging noise came from nearby. Six humans bunched up, tense shoulders pressing against one another as light beams and gun barrels swept the darkness. Finally Brandon’s light passed over the elevator doors, jammed at a mere six inches open. A mangled zombie was inside, one arm nearly detached and its jaw hanging loosely with the skull exposed on one side.

All of them merely stared for a moment, before Adam moved forward, the metal bar thrusting forward in a surprisingly good lunge, slamming into the zombie’s nose like a well-placed billiards shot. The corpse slammed into the rear wall, the snapping of its neck sharp and clear. “We need to hustle,” Patrick muttered, illuminating the escalator frozen in place. “That much noise will attract any zombie on the casino floor.”

With a dirty look, Adam leaped straight up to the top of the escalator, leaving the rest of the group to scurry up single file, the two women guarding the rear with their shotguns. With everyone at the apex, and three more corpses returned to stillness, they moved onward. Habit took over, and they bypassed the exit to the buffet to walk in past the cash registers. Plates and cups still sat on some of the tables, covered with layers of dead insects, and the buffet counters themselves lay covered with thick patches of now-dead mold. Picked-clean bones – occasionally chicken, but mostly human – lay scattered around the floor.

Adam and White Dave shoved chairs out of their way, clearing a path straight to the employee doors next to the grill. With practiced care, Dave pushed the door open while Adam dashed inside, rebar at the ready. The scullery lay empty, save for shards of ceramic scattered across the floor. “Hey, look, a more useful map,” Brandon piped up, his light shining over Adam’s shoulder. Across the room, next to another door, was a fire-exit map, helpfully labeled with various places. The six glided carefully across the tile, shuffling broken plates out of their way. “Elevator to food storage.”

Adam nodded slowly, looking at the map. “Problem is, this doesn’t say what floor it’s on.” He considered it for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll walk down to this freight elevator, see if it says what floor it was on. If it’s not more than one or two, we’ll hit it, otherwise we bug out.”

“Recon in force, aye,” Taunya said, pausing to reload the two shells she’d fired in the parking lot. Then Adam pushed the door open, and they swept out into the back hallway. Away from the public areas, the carpet was much more cheap industrial, the walls plain beige (splattered with decayed blood and brains). Jogging easily down the hallway, they stopped next to the elevator. Without a word, Adam passed his bar and flashlight over to Karen, then set his fingers against the door, took a deep breath, and pulled.

Squealing loudly, the doors parted a full foot before his hands slipped on the metal doors. Taking back the light, he looked first up, then down. “One floor above us, at least three down. I hope the elevator’s on the bottom, but we’re not going down this way.” Patrick and Dave nodded, taking a few steps further down to the staircase, and pushed open the door. “Well?”

“Clear. My bet is the storeroom is one, maybe two down.” Patrick pressed his back against the wall on the inside of the stairs, holding the door with one foot. “The sign doesn’t say, but if there’s another fire map for each floor like there is here, we’ll find it quick.”

Adam stood for a moment, three people staring at him while he considered. “I’ll glance at the top floor, just to see what’s there. Then we go down.” Everyone moved into the stairwell, clearing down to the next landing while Adam calmly leaped up the single flight to the top. He dropped back over the railing, and shook his head. “Admin offices at the top, according to the sign.” He cracked a wan smile. “Thank goodness for OSHA.”

Gliding down the steps, the six scavengers checked the maps on the way. The ground floor had various storerooms for alcohol, cards, dice, and repair shops for the electronics. The first basement was bulk storage for dry goods, like sheets, uniforms, and furniture, so they took a few moments to scout the hallway and the doors. The second basement was the floor they were looking for. “Food storage and money vaults.”

Adjusting their grips on their weapons, they all took a few deep breaths, and Brandon pulled open the door, Adam leaping forward. Only the empty echo of his boots on the cheap tile came, and their lights found nothing. Straightening from his battle-ready crouch, he gestured to the right with his bar. “Food’s this way.” They passed the elevator a few steps later, the doors jammed open with fragments of tooth-marked bones. A set of double-doors on their left sat beneath a cheap plastic sign reading “canned goods.” Preparing their weapons again, they took up positions around the doors as Adam and Patrick pushed them open. Inside, a storage room the size of a large apartment was half filled with industrial shelves, cans reflecting the lights.

Some of the tension left everyone, as hope filled them. “This is awesome,” Brandon said, flicking on the safety and bringing his light closer to some of the cans. “Vegetables, fruit, sauce – this room alone could feed the whole camp for a week.” His eyes glittered with hunger.

Nodding, Adam stepped back out the door. “Good. Let’s hit the other two storerooms. Not as much here as I’d hoped, but still a good haul. Problem is, we’ll have to pack it all to take it back.” He paused as everyone else exited the room, then held up a fist. He stared back down the hall, his light pointed past the stairs but found nothing. “Anyone else hear anything?” he whispered.

They formed up quietly, Dave kneeling with his rifle as the women aimed their shotguns around Adam, Patrick and Brandon watching down the other end of the hall. A minute slid past in agonizing slowness, then another. “Sure it was a zombie?” Dave whispered finally, breaking the silence.

He kept up the light for a moment longer, straining to see past the stairs, then slowly exhaled. “Not sure, but what else would it be?”

“Large building, no maintenance for how many months now?” Brandon spoke quietly over his shoulder. “Still, while I’d say it’s likely and zombies down here wandered out through conveniently-hinged doors, let’s not wait around to test that hypothesis.” He took a single step towards the other storerooms.

No more than a whisper of sound came as five zombies materialized out of nothing, a swirl of smoke heralding their arrival a second before they appeared. Screaming wordlessly, Brandon fired at one, the shotgun blast tearing back the muscle on one arm before the other four grabbed him. Patrick ducked to the side, slamming against the wall as he leveled his pistol and opened fire. The others all turned around swiftly, likewise opening fire.

Before the next trigger was pulled, Brandon was already dead, one of the super-zoms biting clear through to his spine through the side of his neck. Another one settled for ripping off an arm at the elbow before Taunya’s shotgun blasted the side of its head clear of flesh, glistening skull untouched by the buckshot. Dave’s rifle spoke a breath later, the bullet slamming into the exposed skull, flattening, and falling harmlessly to the floor without showing as much as a dent.

With a primal scream, Adam immolated Brandon and the three super-zoms still holding on to his body. The one blasted away had already regained its feet, lurching forward with one arm hanging uselessly. Two shotguns fired in a split second, this time enough to leave a network of cracks in the exposed skull and send the zombie staggering sideways, still chewing on the arm it held. Then Karen screamed, a rotting hand tangled in her hair as a sixth super-zombie appeared behind her. Even as Adam whirled around, it vanished again in a swirl of illusory smoke, taking her with it. “Fuck!” Adam screamed, slamming his rebar into the exposed skull, the bar shattering under the impact along with the skull, splinters of steel shredding the newly-exposed brain and dropping the zombie.

Gesturing, his portal dropped out of the floor, sending Taunya and White Dave tumbling through it to slam into the grass. Reaching forward, Adam grabbed Patrick, yanking him into the portal right as the last visible super-zombie lunged for him. His sleeve tore, and his pistol went spinning off into the suddenly-bright hallway as he fell to the grass, and the portal slammed closed a moment later, severing a rotten arm.

People rushed over quickly, and a sort of muted panic started spreading. “What the hell happened?” Dave called from the building entrance.

Adam took a moment to gather his wits back to himself, and stood up carefully. “Good news: the hotel storeroom we saw was stocked. Bad news: a half-dozen teleporting zombies showed up. I roasted three, and bashed one. Brandon was torn apart in the first second. And one of them grabbed Karen and took her.”

He did try to keep his voice down, but there were still enough people who could hear it. “Well,” their compound leader said quietly. “Fuck me sideways.”

[BlueNinja]

Around nightfall, Adam wearily opened the door to the trailer. Rebecca, Fa, and Julia were sitting around the table, and his niece leaped up to rush over to him, grabbing him tightly around the waist in a hug. He hugged her back, his eyes closed, before gently pushing her away. “What happened, Adam?” his sister asked quietly.

For a few moments, he stalled, taking a soda from the fridge and sitting down next to Fa. He buried his face in her hair, clutching her before finally facing his sister. “We went down into the basement to check the storerooms. Was supposed to be a quick scouting mission, then jump out to the dam to check out the other survivor camp.” He looked down at the can of soda, then mutely punched to top open with a finger, licking the cola of his nail. “We got jumped by six teleporting zombies. Brandon was torn to pieces before we fired a shot. One of them grabbed Karen and disappeared with her.”

The two adults let out a wordless sound of horror, and Julia looked from one to the other, confused. “What … what does that mean?” she asked quietly. Rebecca’s arm went around her daughter, squeezing the girl tightly.

“It means that wherever these super-zombies are coming from, they took her there. Maybe for food, maybe to infect her.” Adam picked up the can, staring at the rising bubbles before taking a large swig. “And without knowing where the hell they are, I couldn’t go after her.” He stared back into the can for a moment and set it down, practically untouched. “I’m going to bed,” he announced, then rose off the bench, slipping away from Fa’s hand without noticing it.

They stared after him for a moment, before Rebecca gently reached across the table. “Go after him,” she murmured. “He needs someone right now,” she added, nudging Julia off the bench. “Let’s make something small for dinner, pumpkin, and then we’ll go to bed too. It’s dark out and we don’t need to be wasting electricity.”

The next morning, they all awoke just before daybreak to the sound of a pistol butt rapping on the door. By the second knock, Adam had opened the door, bloodshot eyes looking down the revolver at M-Rod. “Ah, um, S-sergeant Dave said to come get you,” he stammered out, then backed several steps away before turning to hurry back to the main building.

As Adam leaned against the door, Fa came up behind him, sliding an arm around his waist and pressing her body against his back. “Go on,” she urged. “Go check out the other camp. Find what we need to survive.”

He turned in her grip, looking down into her eyes. “What makes you think I can?”

She smiled, reaching her other hand up to his face and cupping his jaw. “You can. Yeah, those zombies are big and bad and scary, but in they can feel fear, you’re what they’re scared of.” She leaned up on tiptoes, planting a soft kiss on his mouth. “Now go to work.”

She turned to stride back into the bedroom, her lithe form barely visible in the pre-dawn trailer, and he stared at her for a moment before following her and donning a shirt and his boots. Stopping by the door, he looked towards the sofa-bed and the faint glitter of his family’s eyes. “I’ll be back,” he said quietly. “I promise.”

He walked quickly to the building, slipping in through the door quietly. Dave and M-Rod were in the office, and a moment after Adam’s arrival, Patrick and Taunya walked in, holding hands. “What?” she inquired, as everyone stared at them for a moment.

“Nothing,” Dave chuckled, shaking his head. “Alright. Black Dave will be here any moment. You’re all going to check the other camp. Rod, you’re up.” He gestured to the newcomer.

Straightening his leather jacket a bit self-consciously, M-Rod straightened up from where he leaned on the wall. “The soldiers had encircled the whole city with three layers of trenches and barbed wire, backed up with barricades along the road. Well, on the north side, anyway.” He pointed to a county map. “They cleared out the whole way down to the dam, then I blew up the road on the Arizona side. The barricades held out for a few months, but the zombies started circling around them.”

He picked up a pencil, and drew a few X’s on the map. “These buildings were where they kept weapons and ammo. Most of the impressive weapons are long out of ammo, but they had a handful of flamethrowers that still worked, and a couple dozen P90’s. Plus about the same in pistols, though not identical.” He looked up at Adam, meeting the younger man’s eyes nervously. “They overran the camp five days ago, and I don’t know how long the zombies would stick around. I’ve seen the one vanishing zombie that followed you back here. I didn’t see any like that around when they broke the lines, but if they show up can we please run like hell?”

Adam leaned over the map, and Patrick did the same. Black Dave watched from the doorway. “Did they leave any intact vehicles at the dam?”

Pausing to remember, Rodriguez finally nodded. “I think so. Anything out on the road itself, they moved to make barricades across the dam and siphoned. But there’s a little parking garage, for the tourists, that we left some vehicles in. Just made sure it was clear of zombies before we set up the explosives on the other side.”

“Good enough. Let’s get outside.” They went outside, the sky bright enough to start casting faint shadows across the ground. Gathering around Adam, they all waited until he opened one of his portals, and dropped a heavy dozen feet to the road crossing the top of Boulder Dam. Dawn light spread across the rocks at the top of the gorge as they climbed across stacked cars towards the garage. “Jesus, you weren’t kidding.”

Rod grinned, standing on the top and reaching a hand down to Black Dave. “Look at the other side,” he pointed once everyone was standing on the fifteen-foot stack of half-crushed vehicles.

Turning, they all stared at the remains of the road up the east side of the canyon. The switchbacks had been utterly destroyed. Rocks ranging from pebbles up to the size of semi trailers lay crashed all the way up to the first barricade. At the top could be seen a handful of zombie forms, and as they watched, one of the lurched forward towards them. After two steps, something gave way beneath its feet, and they watched it fall, bouncing down the rockfall, off the safety rail, and then down the length of Boulder Dam.

They all turned to stare at M-Rod, who flushed slightly, then grinned and buffed his nails on his leather jacket. “What can I say? It’s a gift.” Laughing, Adam leaped down the barricade to the other side, striding towards the small parking garage as the others climbed more slowly down.

Two hours later, a banana yellow civilian Hummer exited the garage. “Now this is what I call riding in style,” Taunya said from the back seat, her head leaning on Patrick’s shoulder.

“Amen, sister,” Black Dave said from the passenger seat. His shotgun was propped on the mirror pointing forward. “It’s what, half an hour drive to get there?”

Adam nodded. “About that. I’ll be going a little slower than the speed limit, just to make sure we have enough time to see any zombies in the way.” His own steel bar lay propped on his own mirror, still surprisingly clean.

They rode in companionable quiet for almost the full half hour before they started seeing signs of the camp. Clumps of zombies were heading back to the north, probably after having pursued other survivors like M-Rod. Adam slowed, then stopped, the Hummer as the clumps of zombies reoriented on them. The vehicle backed up at a crawl, waiting for the undead to reach maximum burninating potential, before he fired off a blast of golden light and turned them all to ash.

“Looks like we’re getting close,” he said, turning to look over his shoulder at Rod. “Any suggestions on how best to approach the camp?”

“They had a gate on the south side. It was open we I drove out, and we weren’t the first out. It should still be open, and the zombies were thinnest there.” He shrugged helplessly. “Best I can tell you.”

Nodding silently, he put the truck back in drive and eased forward again. A few minutes and another zombies later, they were within sight of the town. Or rather, what was left of it.

[BlueNinja]

Boulder City was a small town, barely fourteen thousand people before the zombie apocalypse. From M-Rod’s estimates, there had been close to a thousand survivors holed up there, better than double their Spring Valley encampment. Mostly, this was because of the military, the Air Force security personnel who’d been out on training in the hills, with their better weaponry and training.

When they came into sight, there was a good quarter-mile stretch where the only thing higher than knee-level were piles of dead zombies. Beyond that was the city, most of the buildings little more than burned-out hulks at this point. “Holy crap,” Taunya said from the back, leaning forward between the seats and staring at the devastation. “You guys don’t fuck around, do you?”

Rod shrugged uncomfortably. “That’s the outer ring. Set up with booby traps and explosives. They had firing lines on the outside, then when the zombies breached the trenches and wire they were supposed to fall back, firing from the roofs as they went, and through the second set of trenches and wire and letting the zombies wear down their numbers on the traps. Incendiary traps would set the buildings on fire, cutting their numbers down further and giving us light to shoot by if they came in at night.” He was silent as the hummer started rolling forward again. “We drove out when the zombies started coming through the second line.”

Adam looked at his face in the rear-view mirror. “Does that mean there could be people still alive inside?”

“Possible, I suppose. There were just so many of them outside. You couldn’t miss hitting a zombie.” He pointed at some of the larger piles. “Look out there. Just on this side, that’s two thousand corpses in sight.”

They moved on in silence, the only noise the quiet rumble of the engine. The half-mile stretch from the last hill up to the city was littered with corpses, individually or in piles, every single one suffering from head trauma.

They passed between burned buildings, unidentified charred bodies mixed among them. After two blocks of ashes and corpses, they stopped at another open area. There had been buildings here once, but the survivors had dismantled or destroyed them, and gouged trenches out of the ground to slow down the undead horde. The only part untouched was the highway, and the asphalt was filled with craters and potholes from explosions and firepower turned against the zombie horde.

Adam stopped the truck in the middle of the trenches. “Where do we go now?”

Rod opened his window, leaning out to look around. “About a block to the left, there’s a credit union. They were using the safety deposit box vault to store ammo and weapons. Two other ones on the other side of town.” He stayed leaning out the window, his rifle propped up next to him as they cruised the battered streets.

No zombies had been seen yet, but surely it was only a matter of time. Parking in front of the credit union, they stared at the sandbag barricades around the building. Bones, chewed clean, lay scattered about the streets, and the bags were brown with dried blood. They exited the truck slowly, weapons out and ready. Nothing moved in the morning sunlight, and they stepped into the shade of the lobby.

Bullet holes lined the walls, and Adam led the way back to the vault, stepping around the counter with his steel bar ready. The back hallway was dim, and he pulled out his flashlight with his other hand, stepping up to the vault doorway. Inside lay boxes of ammunition and a handful of firearms, mostly small handguns, civilian weapons deemed insufficient to regular protection from the undead.

“Awesome,” Patrick said from the back. “Totally awesome.”

Adam nodded silently, and moved inside the vault with his light. “We shouldn’t just drop this stuff through. Let’s get it loaded up into the back of the truck, plus whatever’s still at the sandbags, and if we have to leave it’ll be locked up. If we’re lucky, we can drive back, turn this hummer into a bunker or something.”

They spent ten minutes gathering up ammunition, weapons, and picking through the fallen remains of two dozen zombies and half that many survivors. With the vehicle loaded, they turned towards the north. A block later, they saw the first zombies, tottering out of a motel and shambling towards their hummer. With the vehicle at a crawl, Black Dave and M-Rod opened fire with their rifles, cutting them down as they stepped onto the asphalt. “That’s going to draw more attention,” Patrick said, holding one pistol up against his cheek.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Adam said quietly, hands gripping the steering wheel. As they turned a corner past a day care, a swarm of child zombies came bursting out of the gate, their shuffling faster than the adults. Patrick’s pistols and Taunya’s shotgun blasted forth, sending half the pack falling backwards before the zombies bounced off the metal doors and were left behind. “How much worse is this going to get?” he asked angrily, swerving to mow down a dead teenager.

The answer, as it turned out, was a lot. Less than two blocks later, Adam turned a hard right, then another right, trying to get back to the south end of town. “There’s more than a thousand damn zombies out here,” Taunya shouted over the sound of gunfire. A moment later, her shotgun roared, and she pulled back inside the window to reload.

“Thank you, captain obvious,” Adam retorted, blasting the street ahead of them and gunning the gas. “Where were all of these zombies when we drove in?” His bar swept out the window, the speed of the car and the strength of his arm enough to decapitate it, jaw still snapping futilely as it crunched under the rear tires.

The answer came a moment later, as in front of them on the road, a quarter of zombies appeared, flickering into view in a faint swirl of smoke. Snarling, Adam launched another blast, but they scattered, vanishing in the instant before the blast. He pulled the car into a hard turn, and behind them one of the zombies appeared again, just missing the rear door. “Everybody get ready for a crash!” Adam shouted, yanking his seatbelt on with one hand.

Swearing, everyone else did likewise, yanking their weapons inside to prepare. A zombie appeared on the hood of the car as they did, and Adam yanked the wheel side to side, trying to dislodge it. As the zombie raised a clawed hand, the ground suddenly fell away beneath them, and the hummer fell through, crashing to the ground outside their own encampment, swerving back and forth. “Fuck this noise,” Dave said, leaning out the window with his rifle, firing two shots into the zombie’s torso and sending it tumbling off the hood. As they passed it, moving towards the wall, Adam took a moment to incinerate it.

Parking in front of the stack of cars that marked survivors, they exited carefully. “Hey guys,” Adam shouted up to the sniper towers overlooking the road. “We come bearing firepower.”

An hour later, with the weapons inside the stash and the hummer added to one end of the wall, they stood by Dave’s office, their leader pale and quiet. “How many?”

“At least five thousand, at a guess,” Patrick said. “Once we started getting halfway through the town, they came pouring out of the buildings. I mean, Vegas had a good mil and a half before Z-day. No way of knowing how many didn’t become zombies, but I’m sure there’s a lot of zombies still out there that haven’t managed to wander in front of our guns.”

Everyone stood in silence in the hallway for a few moments. “So. We have one, of three, of the weapon caches. We can’t get to the rest, short of Adam spending several days doing nothing but blasting zombies to ashes. We can’t raid the casinos, because they’re inhabited by teleporting zombies. A quarter of our crops are failing for no reason. The only survivors within a hundred miles that we know of were eaten last week.” Sergeant Dave looked around at everyone. “Anyone have any good news for me?”

They stood for a few moments in silence, as Adam started ticking off points on his fingers. “We can produce our own gunpowder and ammunition. We are growing food, and have enough to make it through until March, at least. Our defenses should take longer for the zombies to get through. And we have me.”

The two men stared in each other’s eyes for a few moments, before Dave nodded. “It still feels like I’m trying to win a poker game by trying to draw to an inside straight.”

Taunya shook her head, turning to leave. “We’ve been doing that ever since Z-day. So far, so good.”